5 Essential Skills for a Mobile Marketer

Email address:

Connect with Author

Vandita is a passionate writer and IT enthusiast. She is a Computer Lecturer by profession at the University of Delhi. She has previously worked as a Software Engineer with Aricent Technologies. Vandita writes for MarTech Advisor as a freelance contributor.

With mobile becoming an indispensable part of everyone’s lives it has become essential to incorporate a ‘mobile first’ strategy in every aspect of your business. You need to have a specialized mobile marketer on-board to understand and manage the nuances of the dynamic and challenging mobile marketing space.

The fast-paced and complex field of mobile marketing is getting more demanding by day – more so, because of the humongous amount of data mobiles bring to the table. With different users with different expectations, marketers must adopt different ways to reach them with specific messages.

We have identified 5 core competencies that a mobile marketer must possess to excel in this role:

1. Customer-centric approach: While mobile allows you to enter your customers’ private space; it has its own advantages as well as pitfalls. A mobile marketer must perceive how to build relationships with his customers and invest in recognizing, empathizing, and rewarding them. He should be able to focus on creating succinct but memorable moments rather than thrusting the message on the customer. Understanding the kind of interaction that is required, the time to reach the customer and through what channel - goes a long way in improving the user’s experience.

In the words of Tali Brousard-Shimer, Marketing Director at Cedato: “Digital marketing on mobile requires a complete change of approach from desktop or offline. Typically, mobile users’ attention span is much shorter as they consume information on the go, expecting instant results. A good mobile marketer will be able to convey a strong message or call-to-action in fewer words, or in a shorter video. As marketers, we often want to put it all out there. For today’s generation of mobile users, less is more. But the real challenge is to say more with less,”

2. A data-driven approach to identify trends: A pro mobile marketer should be able to leverage data to drill down and identify trends, create customer profiles and use behavioral and predictive analysis to comprehend what works for a customer.

With mobile, it is no longer about segmenting the target audience. If you are conversant with the data, you can take personalization to a whole new level by tweaking thousands of messages for different customers – and make it look like they were handcrafted for each one of them. Proficiency in marketing automation and customer profiling will come in handy to achieve this.

3. Test-driven methodology: It is crucial for a mobile marketer to incorporate testing in all his campaigns. It is a gamble to launch a campaign without testing it on a small user base.

Experiments, failures, and learnings are a part of mobile marketer’s life and he shouldn’t shy away from trying new approaches. Trials backed by good testing give valuable insights and learnings that go a long way in making campaign(s) successful.

A rigorous mobile A/B test on a small user base will not only give you the optimal variant but also help mitigate mistakes.

4. Analytical Skills: An analytical bent of mind with a good grip on analytical tools are a must-have skill for a mobile marketer. He should be well versed with mobile analytics platforms and should be technically sound to analyze graphs, query raw data and compile results.

Analytics is important to glean actionable insights, which will power up future experiments and decisions.

5. Learn, collaborate and communicate: A mobile marketer must learn, re-learn and unlearn from his experiences. An agile attitude of constant learning and self-appraisal is a must to survive in the constantly changing environment of mobile.

Keeping abreast of emerging technologies and being apprised of latest marketing trends will give you a competitive edge. Executing successful campaigns is a team effort. A mobile marketer should gel well with his team and seamlessly collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure a smooth running of marketing programs. He should possess excellent communication skills for effective dissemination of information.

Apart from these skills, a marketing manager should be able to respect user privacy. A customer trusts brands with the information when he/she clicks the ‘I agree’ button. With reports of apps lifting information from the handsets, privacy is a growing concern for users. A mobile marketer should be able to embrace the importance of privacy and juggle between providing a good user experience and safeguarding their interests.

To succeed as a Mobile Marketer, you must hone these skills, have a business acumen, and a desire to excel.